Fire in the East (32 page)

‘Can you tell who leads each contingent from their banners?’ Ballista had had this moment in mind when he purchased the Persian youth.

‘Of course,’ Bagoas replied. ‘In the van of the
clibanarii
ride the lords from the houses of Suren and Karen.’

‘I thought that those were great noble houses under the previous regime. I assumed they would have fallen with the Parthian dynasty.’

‘They came to see the holiness of Mazda.’ Bagoas beamed. ‘The King of Kings Shapur in his infinite kindness restored their lands and titles to them. The path of righteousness is open to all.’

‘And the horsemen behind them?’

‘Are the truly blessed. They are the children of the house of Sasan - Prince Valash the joy of Shapur, Prince Sasan the hunter, Dinak Queen of Mesene, Ardashir King of Adiabene.’ Pride radiated from the boy. ‘And look ... there, next in the array, the guards. First the Immortals, at their head Peroz of the Long Sword. Then the Jan-avasper, those who sacrifice themselves. And see ... see who leads them - none other than Mariades, the rightful emperor of Rome.’ The boy laughed, careless of the effect his words were having, the punishments they might bring. ‘The path of righteousness is open to all, even to Romans.’

Out of the swirling dust kicked up by many thousand horses, enormous grey shapes loomed. One, two, three ... Ballista counted ten of them. Bagoas literally jumped for joy, clapping his hands. ‘The earth-shaking elephants of Shapur. Who could think to stand against such beasts?’

Ballista had seen elephants fight in the arena but had never himself faced them in battle. Certainly they looked terrifying, not altogether of this world. They had to be at least ten foot high at the shoulder, and the turrets on their backs added yet more height. Each turret was packed with armed fighting men. At the bidding of an Indian who sat astride behind their ears, the elephants moved their great heads from side to side. Their huge tusks, sheathed in metal, dipped and swung from side to side.

‘Frightening, but inefficient.’ The experience in Turpio’s voice was reassuring. ‘Hamstring them, or madden them with missiles. Kill their drivers, their mahouts, and they will run amok. They are as likely to trample their own side as us.’

The Sassanid army had halted and turned to face the city. A trumpet rang out, clear across the plain.

From the left a small group of five unarmed horsemen appeared, moving at an easy canter. In their midst an enormous rectangular banner embroidered in yellow, red and violet and embedded with jewels that flashed as they caught the sunlight hung from a tall crossbar. The banner was topped by a golden ball, and bright strips of material streamed out behind it.

‘The Drafsh-i-Kavyan, the royal battle flag of the house of Sasan.’ Bagoas almost whispered. ‘It was made before the dawn of time. Carried by five of the holiest of
mobads,
priests, it goes before the King of Kings into battle.’

A lone horseman appeared from the left. He rode a magnificent white horse. His clothes were purple and on his head was a golden domed crown. White and purple streamers floated out behind him.

‘Shapur, the Mazda-worshipping divine King of Kings of Aryans and Non-Aryans, of the race of the gods.’ Bagoas prostrated himself on the battlements.

When Shapur reached the Drafsh-i-Kavyan standard at its station in front of the centre of his army, he reined his horse to a halt. He dismounted, seemingly using a kneeling man as a step. A golden throne was produced and Shapur sat on it. A large number of other men ran about.

‘Enemy numbers?’ Ballista threw the question open to his
con
silium
gathered on the roof of the gate tower.

‘I estimate about 20,000 infantry,’ Acilius Glabrio answered promptly. ‘Then about 10,000 heavy cavalry, 8,000 of them Sassanid
clibanarii
and 1,000 or so each from the Georgians and Sakas. There seem to be roughly 6,000 barbarian light cavalry at the front of the column, maybe 2,000 each from the Arabs and Indians and 1,000 each from the Georgians and Sakas.’ Whatever one thought of the young patrician, it could not be denied that he was an extremely competent army officer. The estimates mapped almost exactly on to those Ballista had made.

‘The Sassanids’ own light cavalry?’ The northerner kept the question short, business-like.

‘Impossible to say,’ answered Mamurra. ‘They are scattered all over the countryside burning and plundering. There is no way for us to estimate their strength. However many there are, the majority will be on our side of the river. There will be just a few across the river - the nearest ford is about 100 miles downstream and we have commandeered every boat for miles. They will not have committed many men across the river.’

‘What the
praefectus
fabrum says is true,’ said Turpio. ‘We cannot know their numbers. At Barbalissos there were somewhere between five and ten light cavalrymen to every
clibariarius,
but at other times their numbers have been said to be about equal.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ballista. ‘So it seems the enemy have somewhere between 40,000 and 130,000 men to our 4,000. At best we are outnumbered ten to one.’ He smiled broadly. ‘It is very lucky for us that it is a bunch of effeminate easterners who get scared at the sound of a noisy dinner party let alone a battle. We would not want to fight anyone with any bollocks at these odds.’ The army officers all laughed. Demetrius tried to join in.

Ballista noted that the baggage train had caught up with the other columns, and that its first task was to erect a spacious purple tent just behind the centre of the army. The tent, which could be none other than Shapur’s, was being set up directly along the western road out of Arete, about 600 paces from the Palmyrene Gate.

Men continued to rush around Shapur.

‘What is going on?’ Ballista asked Bagoas, who was still prostrate.

‘The King of Kings will make sacrifice of a kid to ensure that Mazda smiles on his works here, to ensure that this town of unbelievers falls to the army of the righteous.’

‘Get up off your belly, and mind what you say. You might push our patience too far,’ snapped Ballista.

Despite his tone, the northerner was actually pleased with his Persian slave. Just as he had hoped, he was learning a lot about his enemy from the boy. There was the voluble religious fervour, linked to the awe of the king, and the fact that Bagoas had not considered the Sassanid infantry even worth mentioning. So, an army of fanatics of whom only the cavalry were any good at fighting. Ballista just had to hope that this individual Persian was not totally unrepresentative of his countrymen.

As the boy got up, he briefly put his arms behind his back as if they were bound. Ballista knew that this was the Persian gesture of supplication - possibly the boy was begging Shapur not to blame him for being a slave of the King’s enemies.

The sacrifice having been made, Shapur could be seen issuing orders to the nobleman known as the Suren. On being asked to explain, Bagoas said that the King of Kings would now send the Suren to Ballista. If Ballista and his men submitted and converted to the most righteous path of Mazda, their lives would be spared.

As he watched the Suren walk his horse along the road towards him, Ballista’s thoughts were racing. While the horseman was still about 200 paces away, Ballista quickly issued orders to two of his messengers. All the
ballistae
on the western wall were to prepare to shoot at the enemy army. They were to take maximum elevation as if going for their greatest range but their crews were to loosen the torsion springs by two turns of the washers so that their missiles fell well short of their maximum range. Hopefully it would deceive the enemy about the true range of the
ballistae.
The messengers ran off along the wall walk; one south, the other, the one with the heavy accent from the Subura, north. With the Suren about a hundred paces away, Ballista told Mamurra to go below to the first floor of the tower and train one of the bolt-throwers on the approaching messenger. On Ballista’s command, a bolt was to be shot just over the head of the Suren.

He was riding a beautiful Nisean stallion. It was jet-black, deepchested, no less than sixteen hands tall. Good job it was light cavalry that ambushed us, Ballista thought. Pale Horse would never knock a beast like that back on its hocks.

The Suren reined in his horse. He had stopped about thirty paces from the gate. Ballista was relieved. The enemy nobleman would have detected two of the traps that Ballista had set. He had crossed over two pits in the road, one at a hundred and one at fifty paces from the gate. The pits were concealed from view, boarded over with sand thickly spread on top, but the hollow ring of his stallion’s hooves would have warned the Persian. Yet so far he should know nothing of the final pit, the crucial one, just twenty paces from the gate.

The Suren took his time taking off a tall helmet in the shape of a predatory bird, possibly an eagle. His own features, once revealed, did not look greatly different. With the assurance of a man whose ancestors have owned broad pastures for generations without number, he looked up at the men on the battlements.

‘Who is in command here?’ The Suren spoke in almost unaccented Greek. His voice carried well.

‘I am Marcus Clodius Ballista, son of Isangrim,
Dux Ripae.
I command here.’

The Suren tipped his head slightly to one side, as if better to study this blond barbarian with a Roman name and title. ‘The King of Kings Shapur bids me tell you to heat the water and prepare his food. He would bathe and eat in his town of Arete tonight.’

Ballista tipped his head back and laughed.

‘I am sure that the bum-boy who passes for your kyrios would love to get in the bath and offer his arse to anyone interested, but I fear that the water would be too hot and my soldiers much too rough for his delicate constitution.’

Seemingly unmoved by the obscenity, the Suren methodically began to undo the top of the quiver that hung by his right thigh.

‘What the hell is he doing?’ Ballista demanded of Bagoas in a whisper.

‘He is preparing formally to declare war. He will shoot the cane reed that symbolizes war.’

‘Like fuck he will. Quietly pass the word for Mamurra to shoot.’

The order was muttered from man to man across the gate-house roof and down the stairs.

Having extracted presumably the correct symbolic arrow, the Suren pulled his bow from its case. He was just notching the arrow when came the terrifying loud twang, slide, thump of a
ballista
being released. To his credit, the Suren barely flinched as the bolt shot a few feet above his head. Composing himself, he drew his bow and sent his arrow high over the walls of the town. Then he made his horse rear. The glossy coat of the stallion shimmered as it turned on its hind legs. The Suren called over his shoulder.

‘Do not eat all the smoked eel, northerner. My
kyrios
is very fond of smoked eel.’

Ballista called for the rest of the artillery to shoot. As the Suren and his magnificent mount disappeared back up the road, the missiles arched over their heads but fell some way short of the watching Sassanid army.

‘Clever,’ said Acilius Glabrio. ‘Very clever to pre-empt their barbarian declaration of war with an impromptu version of our very own Roman ceremony of throwing a spear into enemy territory.’ The ever-present sneer dropped from the tribune’s voice as he went on. ‘But if you have tricked them into thinking the range of our artillery is only about 300 paces, that is far cleverer.’

Ballista nodded. Actually, he had been thinking of something else, of Woden the Allfather casting his spear into the ranks of the Vanir in the first ever war. And, from the very first war, it was a very small step to thinking of Ragnarok, the war at the end of time, when Asgard will fall and death come to man and gods alike.

 

Ballista was leaning on the wall of the terrace of the palace of the
Dux Ripae.
He was looking down and across the river. He was looking at something horrible.

Where had the woman come from? He had had cavalry methodically sweep the opposite bank, driving everyone they found down to the boats and back across the river. Peevishly he thought that it had not been easy getting two
turmae
of cavalry ferried back and forth across the Euphrates. Of course, some fools will always stay in the false delusional safety of their homes, no matter with what certainty you tell them of the horror that man or gods are about to visit on them. Maybe the Sassanids had brought her with them.

Every now and then the horse archers would pretend to let her get away. She would run towards the river. Before she got there, the horsemen would ride her down. They would throw her to the ground and another two or three of them would rape her. There were about twenty of them.

With none of his usual noises, Calgacus leant on the wall beside Ballista. ‘They are all inside. For once Acilius Glabrio was on time. So were Turpio, Antigonus and the four centurions you told to come. It was Mamurra who was late.’

Both men looked across the river.

‘Bastards,’ said Ballista.

‘Don’t even think of trying to save her,’ said Calgacus. ‘It is just what they want. She would be dead by the time you got any troops into a boat, and then your men would land into an ambush.’

‘Bastards,’ said Ballista.

They both continued to look over the river.

‘It’s not your fault,’ said Calgacus.

‘What?’ The silence of the Caledonian’s arrival should have warned Ballista that something was coming.

‘What is happening to that poor girl over there ... the fact that this city is being besieged and, no matter what, lots of its people are going to suffer and die ... what happened to Romulus and those scouts ... none of it is your fault.’

Ballista briefly pulled an unconvinced face but his eyes remained fixed over the river.